Introduction
Global organizations are managing ongoing pandemic-related challenges—supply chain issues, worker shortages, and the continued need to respond to changing regulatory health and safety mandates. Businesses across industries are moving forward, leveraging technology to rebuild customer relationships, automate and streamline business processes, and increase revenue. Cloud utilization is an essential element of their strategies. In our 2021 Global Cloud Survey, 74% of businesses said the cloud was the central part of their digital transformation. While the public cloud has seen high adoption levels, businesses are increasingly implementing hybrid and multicloud configurations comprising both public cloud and private data center facilities.
A recent trend is the increased adoption of edge computing in hybrid cloud configurations. Edge locations include local compute, storage, and networking resources with limited functionality or capacity that connect to the company data center and/or cloud. While Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications (e.g., collecting and analyzing sensor data locally to take predictive action) were the primary drivers for edge computing, several other verticals, such as retail (which uses point-of-sale data to push in-store promotions) and healthcare (which collects and processes data from wearables), have embraced edge computing to process data locally and analyze and respond to application needs faster.
Traditional networking that involves backhauling traffic to a centralized location is now inefficient given the distributed nature of enterprise applications (on-premises, remote data centers, edge locations, and multiple clouds) and the increasingly distributed nature of users, devices, employees (who might report to work via a physical branch, remote home office), and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Software-defined WAN technology eliminates many traditional WAN challenges, as users can deploy and orchestrate SD-WAN edge devices (physical and virtual) wherever necessary (at the branch, in the cloud, or at any edge location). However, the need to securely connect distributed users (and things) to cloud-based applications is driving the need for softwaredefined, cloud-delivered security.
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As Edge Computing Gains Traction, the Business Case for SASE is Stronger than Ever
